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Update metadata and transcripts through end of July 2026

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Episode: 4680
Title: Robert A. Heinlein: The Future History, Part 2
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4680/hpr4680.mp3
Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:16:42 (official HPR transcript)
---
This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4680, for 2026-07-10
Today's show is entitled, "Robert A. Heinlein: The Future History, Part 2"
The host is Ahuka and the duration is 00:13:03
The flag is Clean, and the license is CC-BY-SA
The summary is "We continue our look at Heinlein's Future History."
Hello, this is Ahuka, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio and another exciting episode
in our ongoing look at science fiction and fantasy. And we're continuing with Heinlein
and we're going to do the second part of his future history. So the first part was in the previous
episode and we're just going to wrap up this particular thing today. Now there were a few key
themes running through Heinlein's body of work. One we have already remarked upon individual
freedom, which had to be protected from any source of power, including both government and private
corporations. Now this was essentially a libertarian perspective, but unlike many of today's libertarians,
he was equally averse to the corporate type of power as a threat. But he had a complex view of
the world, which has resisted some attempts to pitch and hold him. He started out as a socialist,
and while he didn't remain one, he never became an e-jerk reactionary either. In fact, he clearly
despised them just as much. One way of looking at his body of work is that he explored the ramifications
of different social policies through his stories. But in most cases, the needs of a good story
came first, at least in the early years. Now in his later works, he often surrendered to the temptation
to pontificate, which reduced the enjoyment of them somewhat for anyone who was not already
in agreement with his opinions. The second major theme you see throughout all his works is the
idea of the competent individual. He admired anyone who could do a job well, and clearly did not
care whether they were a man or a woman, nor a black or a white. As Alexei pension rights
in Highline in Dimension, Link in the Show notes, there is one unique and vivid Highline character,
but he's a composite of Jojim Gregory, Harriman, Waldo, Lazarus long, Mr. Kiku, and many others,
rather than anyone individual. I call the composite the Highline individual. It is a single
personality that appears in three different stages, and is repeated in every Highline book in one
form or another. The earliest stage is that of the competent but naive youngster. The second stage
is the competent man in full glory, the man who knows how things work. The last stage is the wise old man,
who not only knows how things work, but why they work, too. Now, Harriman, from that list,
we've already encountered in the man who sold the moon. The others appear later in various works of
Highline and we'll get to them. The Highline individual, as he has often referred to, appears in many
if not all of Highline's stories. A third major theme has to do with morality and religion.
Highline grew up in what he considered the heart of the Bible built in Missouri,
and saw firsthand how the evangelical Christians operated, and he despised what he saw,
as someone who believed an individual for him, he could never surrender to someone else's idea
of how he should live his life. He saw them as a danger to his ideal libertarian society,
and this shows up very early in his work. He personified the good, upright, church-going focus,
Mrs. Grundi, and while you might want to draw the drapes to keep her from knowing what you were doing,
you should never let her dictate how you would live your life.
Revolta in 2,100 begins the exploration of this in detail. Now, there's a chart of the future history at
Bang Books link in the show notes, and in it we see that the sixties, the 1960s, were what
Highline called the Crazy Years, remember he conceived this in the 40s and 50s. But in 2012,
the major thing occurred when Niemia Scutter, a backwards preacher, managed to get elected as president.
This would be the last election held under the U.S. Constitution as he established a religious
dictatorship that lasted a couple of generations. Now, is this plausible? Well, here's what Highline
had to say. As for the idea that we could lose our freedom by succumbing to a waiver of religious
hysteria, I am sorry to say that I consider it possible. I hope that it is not probable,
but there is a latent, deep strain of religious fanaticism in this our culture. It is rooted in
our history, and it is broken out many times in the past. It is with us now. There has been a sharp
rise in strongly evangelical sects in this country in recent years, some of which hold beliefs
theocratic and the extreme anti-intellectual anti-scientific and anti-libertarian.
Now, his background in the Bible belt is what informs a lot of his thinking. He goes on to
describe how this might happen. Throwing a depression for good measure, promise a material heaven here
on earth had a dash of anti-semitism, anti-catholicism, anti-negroism, and a good large dose of
anti-fereners in general, and anti-intellectuals here at home, and the result might be something
quite frightening. Particularly, when one recalls that our voting system is such that a minority
distributed as pluralities and enough states can constitute a working majority in Washington.
Now, as the science fiction author David Bren points out, Heinlein accurately predicted
much of what we are going through in the United States right now. There is an emerging dictatorship
in the United States promoted by right-wing religious groups. The material heaven here on earth
is represented by the prosperity gospel, prominent in the Trump movement and so on.
Where the profit used a restored Ku Klux clan as his muscle, we have the proud boys and so on.
It really does track very closely. Read David Bren's article for more oneness and there is a link
in the show notes for it. But nothing lasts forever. Empires rise and fall. Governments change.
And in this case, a resistant movement arises. The revolt is depicted in the novella
if this goes on, published in 1940, and it is set in the year 2100, giving the title to the book.
The main character is John Lyle, who is a young army officer assigned to the group,
protecting the profit in his capital of New Jerusalem. In the beginning, he is thoroughly
indoctrinated, but then begins to question his beliefs when he falls for one of the profits
virgins, sister Judith. He has an older companion in the military who is not only unshocked
when John confides in him about his doubts, but offers to help him. He turns out that this companion,
Zeb Jones, is a member of the underground group called the Kabald that is working to overthrow
the theocracy, in the end they are successful. And in the course of this, John Lyle does a lot of
growing up. In this we see another common characteristic of high-nine stories. A young naive boy
meets up with an older and wiser man who helps him grow. Now in 2016, that story, if this goes on,
won the retro Hugo Award for the best novella of 1940. And in a personal note, I happen to have a
t-shirt that says scutter for president 2012. This baffles most people, but I enjoy the end joke.
Now what is interesting in this book is that high-nine doesn't stop with a successful
revolution. He then goes on in a second novella to describe the government that arose following
the revolution. And this story is called Coventry, also published in 1940.
The new government that arises after the revolution is called the Covent. And it is an attempt
to make sure that what happened with scutter in 2012 could never happen again. It is a strongly
libertarian government based on an agreement to be non-violent. In this society, scientists
can cure criminal and violent tendencies, but any citizen convicted of such must agree to the treatment.
The alternative to treatment is that can be exiled to a place called Coventry. Coventry is
outside of the Covenant society and the Covenant society has nothing to do with them.
Now our protagonist in the story, David McKinnon, is convicted of assault and chooses to go to
Coventry instead of getting the treatment. He imagines it is a peaceful anarchy, but is
disabused of this notion when he has robbed of all of his possessions upon entry and then thrown
in jail. If fellow inmate, Fader McGee, helps him escape, and we learn he is an agent of the Covent
in government. They learn that two of the factions in Coventry have joined forces and have found
a way to break through the barrier that surrounds Coventry. They plan to attack and overthrow the Covent
government. David and Fader work separately to escape and get back to Warren, the federal government,
which they do successfully. And by doing this, David has demonstrated that he is no longer a
danger to the Coventry society and no longer subject to treatment.
Now this story won a Prometheus Hall of Fame Award, which is awarded by the Libertarian Future
Society. And the Covent Society certainly has Libertarian features, but this is not the
Randy inversion of Libertarianism. As exemplified by the fact that David is restored to the society
because he demonstrated his concern for others. Heinlein always promoted individual freedom,
but also the idea that people have a responsibility toward others. Finally, revolt and 2100
contains the short story, miss that, which we have looked at previously.
Now the past through tomorrow is a one-volume collection of most of the future history stories
and I put a link in the show notes for that as well. I say most because just which stories belong
in this group could change from time to time. It also has the last version of the chart of
the future history and a few stories we have not yet mentioned, such as Methuselus children
and the menace from Earth. And many of his other works contain back references to these events
that imply that they might be set in the same alternate universe. Heinlein gets the last word on this.
He said, I have never been sure whether or not publishing that chart was a good idea or a bad
mistake. Possibly it helped to sell some stories later, but certainly it caused me and still
causes me to receive a lot of nuisance mail from nitpickers. I have never felt bound by that chart.
He was to serve me not the other way around. If I found myself with a good story notion,
which fitted fairly well into the chart, but not perfectly, I shed no tears. I went ahead
and let the inconsistency stand. I want each story to be internally consistent, but I won't
myself be painted into a corner through trying to fit to that chart perfectly. I may start another
future history story tomorrow and find that to make it a good yarn I must violate some item on
the chart. I'll give it the nitpicker something to pick, for I will not hurt a good yarn for the
sake of logic. Logic is not involved as that chart is fiction, not holy written.
So with that, this is a hookah for Hacker Public Radio. I'm going to sign off now and as always
encouraging you to support free software. Bye-bye.
You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio.org.
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